Eddie Nketiah insists Arsenal have a taste for trophies after he came off the bench to score a late winner at the expense of West Ham on Saturday night.
Mikel Arteta’s side have won their opening two Premier League fixtures as they look to build a strong league campaign on the back of FA Cup and Community Shield success.
Nketiah struck with five minutes remaining to secure a 2-1 win after the Hammers – who were the better team for much of the contest – had levelled through Michail Antonio following Alexandre Lacazette’s opener.
𝑾𝒉𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒈𝒐𝒏𝒏𝒂 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍?— Arsenal (@Arsenal) September 19, 2020
The three points will be seen as vital with the Gunners now entering a run of difficult fixtures that sees them face five of the seven teams that finished above them last year.
But Nketiah wants to keep up the winning feeling on the back of their recent silverware.
“We want to be winning games and we want to be challenging for stuff,” the told the club’s official website.
“It’s a great start and we’re looking to build on it and keep pushing and hopefully get more points in the future.
“Everyone is raring to go, everyone is buzzing and we’ve had a taste of success and we’re hungry for more. It’s been a great start and we’re looking to keep that going throughout the season.”
Nketiah’s goal was set up by Dani Ceballos, just a week on from a clash between the pair in the warm-up ahead of the win over Fulham.
“That’s the beauty of this sport,” Arteta said when asked about the pair combining for the winner.
“They were in the headlines last week for something that happened between them, it would have been negative. Today, they found a way to understand each other and create a winning goal.”
Asked about the incident himself, Nketiah replied: “There was a bit of a coming together. I was a bit upset with the challenge but we made up pretty quickly and we got on with it.
“It was a great pass across, good vision from him, I just tried to stay onside and make sure I was behind the ball. It was a pretty easy finish from there, but it was a great ball.”
West Ham boss David Moyes was left frustrated with two VAR decisions which went against his side – a tight offside call with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for Lacazette’s goal and a potential handball in the box by Arsenal defender Gabriel Magalhaes that went unpunished.
But the general performance of his side – especially on the back of an insipid performance in a 2-0 loss at Newcastle on the opening day – would have pleased Moyes and full-back Arthur Masuaku knows they need to take the positives from the Emirates Stadium.
“It was a decent team performance, but not the result we wanted,” he told whufc.com.
“We just have to take the positives from this game because as a team I think we played well. We showed a great team spirit and we played well as a team.
“Last week was a poor performance against Newcastle, and the gaffer told us that we need to change this – we need to play as a team and be hard to beat.
“We’ve shown that we can compete against these teams. We have a strong team and if we play like we did on Saturday, we will win games.”
